Showing posts with label grade 9. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grade 9. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Monday, June 15, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Friday, June 12, 2015
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Currently Reading: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
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| image by Alejandro esCamilla via unsplash |
I read a lot of books. Seriously, a lot. The school librarian allows me to take out as many as I can carry each week (teacher perks!). Kids give me funny looks when they see the weekend pile on my desk.
Now before you think I'm bragging, very few of the books I read are brainy books. Their authors probably didn't win any Nobel prizes. I've studied literature. Literature is okay. What I love is a rattling good story. One that I am eager to pick up and unwilling to put down.
But one of the things I realised, looking back on 2014, is that I can't actually remember all the books I've read. Some made a big impact, but I can't quite remember the name. Others had catchy titles but were boring on the inside. And I'd quite like to be able to look back and see some of them. Maybe even reread one or two.
So, here on Daydreaming, I am going to try keep an (incomplete) record of some of what I read, love and hate.
The first one is a bit of a cheat, because I actually read it for work (as you can see by all the sticky notes below: can anyone say #bookselfie?). However...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is one of those books which you read really quickly and then get stuck thinking about for the next few months. I read it first a few years ago, loved it, and recently revisited it when we decided to do it as a setwork with our grade 9s this year. It made a big splash when it first came out, and won lots of awards and things.
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In the novel Mark Haddon has lovingly portrayed Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15 year old boy with a difference. Well, lots of differences really, some of which (like not eating anything brown or yellow, or really really not liking anyone to touch him) make it quite difficult for him to manage in ordinary society. But he likes animals - probably since their emotions are much easier to understand - which leads him onto his great Odyssey: solving the murder of Wellington the dog.
As numerous people have said, all over the internet, this is not a book about disability, but about difference. This is not just good publicity. It's true. Christopher's adventures might seem trivial when I just tell you about them (in one episode he succeeds, with enormous difficulty, in buying a train ticket), but from his point of view they are nothing short of heroic. I identify with that. Some mornings, it seems heroic to get out of bed. And if you have an aversion to people touching you, why shouldn't conquering the tube station be utterly valiant?
However, The Curious Incident isn't just a serious book. Although it is deeply sad at times (investigating Wellington's death leads Christopher to make all sorts of tragic discoveries), it is also profoundly funny. And not in the "one liner" way that makes you laugh and then forget about it. It is funny in a way which makes you laugh at yourself, at the weird things that we do so often that we forget they're weird. Christopher is one of the best "innocent" narrators I've ever read. He reports incidents with a deadpan, often uncomprehending exactitude, revealing absurdity after absurdity in modern life, some of which we are forced to recognize in spite of the fact that he doesn't understand them at all.
Also, I think Ed Boone is one of the most outstandingly realistic good fathers portrayed in fiction ever.
By the way, Christopher is happens to be extremely intelligent, in the mathsy-sciencey sense. How can a Maths teacher not love a novel with a mathematical proof in the appendix?
Okay, so I enjoyed this book. Perhaps too sad to get onto my "read every year" shelf, but one of those novels which you come out of... slightly different than you were before.
yours literately.
jjr
The first one is a bit of a cheat, because I actually read it for work (as you can see by all the sticky notes below: can anyone say #bookselfie?). However...
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is one of those books which you read really quickly and then get stuck thinking about for the next few months. I read it first a few years ago, loved it, and recently revisited it when we decided to do it as a setwork with our grade 9s this year. It made a big splash when it first came out, and won lots of awards and things.
In the novel Mark Haddon has lovingly portrayed Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15 year old boy with a difference. Well, lots of differences really, some of which (like not eating anything brown or yellow, or really really not liking anyone to touch him) make it quite difficult for him to manage in ordinary society. But he likes animals - probably since their emotions are much easier to understand - which leads him onto his great Odyssey: solving the murder of Wellington the dog.As numerous people have said, all over the internet, this is not a book about disability, but about difference. This is not just good publicity. It's true. Christopher's adventures might seem trivial when I just tell you about them (in one episode he succeeds, with enormous difficulty, in buying a train ticket), but from his point of view they are nothing short of heroic. I identify with that. Some mornings, it seems heroic to get out of bed. And if you have an aversion to people touching you, why shouldn't conquering the tube station be utterly valiant?
However, The Curious Incident isn't just a serious book. Although it is deeply sad at times (investigating Wellington's death leads Christopher to make all sorts of tragic discoveries), it is also profoundly funny. And not in the "one liner" way that makes you laugh and then forget about it. It is funny in a way which makes you laugh at yourself, at the weird things that we do so often that we forget they're weird. Christopher is one of the best "innocent" narrators I've ever read. He reports incidents with a deadpan, often uncomprehending exactitude, revealing absurdity after absurdity in modern life, some of which we are forced to recognize in spite of the fact that he doesn't understand them at all.
Also, I think Ed Boone is one of the most outstandingly realistic good fathers portrayed in fiction ever.
By the way, Christopher is happens to be extremely intelligent, in the mathsy-sciencey sense. How can a Maths teacher not love a novel with a mathematical proof in the appendix?
Okay, so I enjoyed this book. Perhaps too sad to get onto my "read every year" shelf, but one of those novels which you come out of... slightly different than you were before.
yours literately.
jjr
Friday, January 4, 2013
2013? Really?
Hello everyone!
So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.
(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)
So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:
...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!
My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...
"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.
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Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!
But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...
ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.
Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.
I think that's quite enough resolution-type things for me for one day...nap time?
So apparently it's 2013 already - and the internet is full of focus words, resolutions and general planning goodness. Far be it from me to buck the trend.
(Some of you may have noticed that I've killed Out of Perspective - splitting my attention was a silly idea in the first place. But I did import all the posts, so nothing lost!)
So, on to some of what 2013 holds for me:
teaching english
Yes, this year I am teaching THREE English classes (grade 8, 9 and 10) and only TWO Maths classes (grade 9 and 10). While this is a good thing (I've been wanting to wriggle into English teaching, and yay! no grade 12s), it is also a VERY VERY stressful thing. I've been teaching Maths for almost three years. How much experience do I have teaching English?? Zip, zilch, nada...
Prep time!
teaching maths
So I'm still teaching a fair bit of Maths though, and will continue to lead the grade 9 Maths team at my school, which means a lot of resource creation and general admin. I'm pleased with the plans we've set in place to tweak the ordering of the syllabus, and this year I will be teaching a top-set grade 9 class - yay! Last year I had all mixed groups in terms of Mathematical ability - pretty demoralising when at least half my kids failed every exam. So although I enjoy teaching kids who struggle with Maths, it will make a nice change.
As good as a holiday? We'll see. This past holiday will be pretty hard to beat.
family
...which doesn't only consist of my cats, believe it or not!
My younger sister is getting married in April (yikes), and then moving to England with her beloved! Very exciting times, but also a bit sad and definitely stressful. So this year will be full of family things, at least for the first part, and I want to try and prioritise them as much as I can...
"Family" also covers my mini family (husband + two cats) and home, and trying to leave work earlier as often as possible (5pm, please? maybe??) so that I can spend time at home and hopefully not leave such chaos behind me when I go to bed at night.
creativity
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Last year I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time, and absolutely LOVED it. So come November 2013, all else being equal, I will NaNoWriMo again! Yay!
But I also want to get into the routine of getting creative work going regularly throughout the year, starting with the editing of Mending Hedges (my NaNo novel from 2012). I've also got some other interesting plots and plans up my sleeve but we shall see... dum, dum, dum...
ALSO, I want to get back to a more regular blogging schedule. To that end, I want to stop putting pressure on myself to create one type of post or another at any particular time - just to write and create whatever springs to mind based on current events. Realistically, I will be trying one general post and/or one writing post per week (depending on work situations). Mainly posting on Saturdays, as far as I can make out my schedule, but obviously trying to gather material throughout the week and mainly construct the posts over the weekend.
Anyhow, I'll give it a decent effort for the first little while, and hope to hold up my end when the school work gets tougher.
sjoe!
Friday, July 13, 2012
Teaching Transformations and CAPS
Since the curriculum changed soon after I left high school (2008 for the first batch of matriculants), geometrical transformations (reflections, rotations, translations and enlargements) have been a small but important part of the curriculum in Maths from grade eight through to grade twelve.
But the problem is that teaching functions (linear, quadratic, hyperbolic, exponential) is really lacking in depth if you teach it without referring back to transformations (I should know, I learnt it without any knowledge of transformations). Functions are so much more sensible if you understand transformations. And Maths should always be sensible. Well, where possible anyway.
Net result: we teach almost all of the transformations (leaving out detailed rules of rotation) in grade 8 and 9. We do basic understanding of physical transformations in grade 8. This means that in a one-two week module in grade 9 we have to achieve a reasonable level of understanding and competency with the rules of translations, reflection and enlargement.
Bear in mind that being decent, hard-working teachers (most days of the week), we don't just want to give them the rules and let them get on with it. We want them to at least have a "hand-wavy" understanding of where the rules come from.
With this aim in mind, I have created a series of worksheets aimed to develop a solid intuition about how the various types of transformations can be represented algebraically. I attach some screenshots of the best bits for your delectation and delight. I will put them on TPT as soon as I've given them a test run (and since it'll be a test run by my whole department it should be reasonably accurate **we hope**)
The aim is to start with what the kids CAN do (writing points as coordinates, physically transforming the shape using geometrical methods...) or at least are supposed to be able to do. Needless to say half of them will have forgotten, which is why I'm planning to use this series of worksheets as "do on your own - now do together" type resources, question by question so that the weaker kiddies don't get completely lost or end up going on their own little completely incorrect mission.
But we need to move very swiftly on to focusing on the coordinates of vertices, and figuring out the relationship between the object coordinates and image coordinates. Otherwise we stay in grade 8 forever...the horror!!
You'll notice that 2.4 represents quite a jump forward. So I anticipate spending a fair bit of time in class looking at the table together and formulating a sensible answer. The second half of question 2 then does exactly the same process all over again with the other translation shown in the image...
Then, after some notes and a fair bit of repetition, we get onto using the notation properly and skipping out the intermediate steps. In other words, actually using the rules which they will now be intuitively happy with.
When we go onto the next installment (reflections), we take the steps a teeny bit faster, and they have to get to the comparison of coordinates a teeny bit more independently. Just to mix things up a bit (and prevent the stronger learners from getting too bored).
What do you think?
Can we get through this in 5x forty minute lessons??
We really need to, so wish us luck!
 |
| If you've forgotten what geometric transformations are then there is a fun free powerpoint with lots of pretty pictures here. There are also awesome notes and visualisation tools here. |
Now we have just started grade ten roll-out of a new new-curriculum: CAPS. And we decide to remove ALL transformations from grade 10 to 12. Which is cool...we have to take something out to make room for all the new stuff...
Net result: we teach almost all of the transformations (leaving out detailed rules of rotation) in grade 8 and 9. We do basic understanding of physical transformations in grade 8. This means that in a one-two week module in grade 9 we have to achieve a reasonable level of understanding and competency with the rules of translations, reflection and enlargement.
Bear in mind that being decent, hard-working teachers (most days of the week), we don't just want to give them the rules and let them get on with it. We want them to at least have a "hand-wavy" understanding of where the rules come from.
With this aim in mind, I have created a series of worksheets aimed to develop a solid intuition about how the various types of transformations can be represented algebraically. I attach some screenshots of the best bits for your delectation and delight. I will put them on TPT as soon as I've given them a test run (and since it'll be a test run by my whole department it should be reasonably accurate **we hope**)
The aim is to start with what the kids CAN do (writing points as coordinates, physically transforming the shape using geometrical methods...) or at least are supposed to be able to do. Needless to say half of them will have forgotten, which is why I'm planning to use this series of worksheets as "do on your own - now do together" type resources, question by question so that the weaker kiddies don't get completely lost or end up going on their own little completely incorrect mission.
But we need to move very swiftly on to focusing on the coordinates of vertices, and figuring out the relationship between the object coordinates and image coordinates. Otherwise we stay in grade 8 forever...the horror!!
You'll notice that 2.4 represents quite a jump forward. So I anticipate spending a fair bit of time in class looking at the table together and formulating a sensible answer. The second half of question 2 then does exactly the same process all over again with the other translation shown in the image...
Then, after some notes and a fair bit of repetition, we get onto using the notation properly and skipping out the intermediate steps. In other words, actually using the rules which they will now be intuitively happy with.
When we go onto the next installment (reflections), we take the steps a teeny bit faster, and they have to get to the comparison of coordinates a teeny bit more independently. Just to mix things up a bit (and prevent the stronger learners from getting too bored).
I won't bore you with endless repetitions: I do essentially the same thing three times for translation, reflection and enlargement, and a brief version for rotations. The emphasis throughout is on correct notation and terminology, and attempting to make a strong intuitive link between the algebraic representation and the geometric representation.
AND FINALLY...we whizz through a whole bunch of exam type questions. Just to satisfy the endless chorus of "What's in the exam, ma'am??", and of course also to calm the nervous and generally satisfy curriculum requirements.
What do you think?
Can we get through this in 5x forty minute lessons??
We really need to, so wish us luck!
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